In "Olympians call for 'everyday cycling' investment in UK", the British Olympians write a letter to their government calling for 5% of their transport budgets to go on cycle lanes in order to honor their success from Olympic (2016).
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My Yes/No question is:
Should Thai government make an investment in cycle lanes?
My answer is:
Yes, but bike lanes might not work practically.
Since I know the benefits of cycling, I am not surprised why people try to encourage their government to spend a huge amount of money constructing protected lanes for cycle. This government's scheme seems to work very well in many countries. However, I am not sure whether the cycle lanes will be successful if they are constructed in Thailand where motorcycles are practically allowed to ride even on the footpath and are able to honk pedestrians to pave the way for them as if walking on the pavement is totally wrong. One day, I was on the bus to Sanamluang, I passed the bike routes around Rattanakosin, the road around temples in the old town of Bangkok. I think this bike routes were built so as to facilitate foreign travelers to go to the temples nearby more easily. I noticed that there is a orange traffic sticks on the way in the bike route. I guess that the purpose is to deter motorbikes from using these lanes. And these sticks did their job because there is no motorbike on the protected lanes. But actually there is no bicycles either. I think it is because Thailand's weather is too hot for riding bike for pleasure.
So if the government spend the national budget on bike route construction, I would like to be certain that the lanes will be reserved for the use of cycling ,not for anything else and the government should estimate the value of this as well. The authorities should keep asking themselves whether it is worth investing in or not. What do you think?
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Reference
Olympians call for 'everyday cycling' investment in UK. (2016, September 1). BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-37242352
Bike lanes seem to be good in rural areas but not in Bangkok where traffic congestion and air pollution are the worst and with around 30 degrees Celsius each day I don't think it's suitable for cycling.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Namwan's ideas. In Kaset-Nawamin road, I saw motorcyclists using cycle lanes in rush hours rather than bicyclists. So, I think this seems to be useless in urban area such as in Bangkok. Maybe it would be better that government spend money on public transportation in urban areas such as BTS or MRT.
DeleteI agree that bicycle lanes seem to be ideal and might be useless in central Bangkok. Most city dwellers get used to the rushing lifestyle. In the morning, people tend to choose the fastest mode of transportation which will help them reach the destination on time. Also, in the evening, most of them arrive home so late that they don't have time to relax themselves. Therefore the chilling form of transport like bicycle is not popular in the city like Bangkok. In addition, toxic gas emission, noise pollution and extremely hot weather discourage us from riding bicycle regardless of the best cycle lanes which might be constructed.
DeleteI like the idea of everyday cycling but from what i've been observing so far, the current bike lanes in Bangkok are mostly turn into motorcycle lane or street vendor lanes. So if there would be another investment on building additional bike lane, i think it should be hold off until we can make sure the extra ones won't end up like this.
ReplyDeleteCreating a bike culture would be a good idea, although an extremely hot and humid whether we have here in Bangkok would make it harder to turn the idea into practice. What i mean by culture is making it more relatable as a part of our typical daily lives more than a fast fashion or fancy lifestyle. I see a lot of campaigns from the government to convince Bangkoknian to consider cycling to work but i rarely see them do it themselves. They only bought a fancy bicycle , took a picture with it and then bang!.. A good life can be created here in BKK lol
*Correcting the typo: weather instead of whether
DeleteThere are many things to consider for encouraging people to use non-motorized modes like bicycling. For example, Bangkok's pollution, temporature, conditions of streets, people's agreement (I mean that constructing bicycling lanes will interrupt local people in the Rattanakosin or not? It's depended on public relation and their perception), these factors are challenges for BMA, urban planners, and other relevant organisations to find a solution to promote this mode. Bicycling has more benefits than traveling by cars if we can journey in a short distance; however, it is hard to implement for this city.
ReplyDeleteAs others have suggested, who would cycle in the sun in Bangkok? Perhaps if the bike lanes were also shaded, which might also work to prevent invasion from non-cycling road users. But it just seems impractical to me. I enjoy my ten walks to AUA, and I used to enjoy walking to the Rajadamri location before we moved to Chamchuri: that allowed a pleasant walk through Lumpini Park, but I don't think I'd enjoy cycling.
ReplyDeleteI'm waiting for self-driving cars, which I hope will greatly reduce traffic by making massive numbers of cheap, driverless taxis available. This will hopefully tempt people from the unhealthy habit of private car ownership, which could be taxed a lot more highly to keep the public car system cheap for everyone (I generally don't favour communist-like government control of poeple's lives, but some government intervention is justified).